Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms (22 page)

Shortly before she died, she looked up toward that same corner of the wall and raised her hands as if she were reaching for something. Then she closed her eyes, and 15 minutes later, she died.

To this day, I wonder what my mother meant when she said, “Maybe they were right.” Were they right that it was time for her to die? I’m just not sure, but I do believe that as we approach the end of life, we may see things that we don’t fully understand.

As a nurse, I’m well aware that visions are often attributed to oxygen deprivation or some sort of physiological aberration. However, many of my patients have these experiences weeks before death when a lack of oxygen can’t be blamed. These incidents happen so often that they can no longer be dismissed.

A
N
I
NVITATION

by Lainey

About ten years ago, I started working in end-of-life care as a social worker. Those of us in this field get sort of desensitized to death because for us, it’s an everyday event. And although people often think that my job must be depressing, they don’t understand the gifts that come out of it.

I currently spend a good bit of time in a general hospice inpatient unit, where we function as the go-to people to counsel dying individuals and their families.

The hospice employees seek my team and me out if they want to share something or check out whether or not a situation is normal. We become the staff shrinks in a sense. New team members also come to us when a dead loved one appears to a patient. They ask questions like: “What should I do? Have you seen anything like this before? They aren’t on opiates, but they keep having visions—what is it? Could it be real? What if I think it’s real? Am
I
crazy?” We’ve seen and heard it all. In fact, there isn’t a hospice team anywhere that doesn’t have these kinds of stories. I think they’re fascinating because they’re so similar and yet unique to each individual. One patient especially stands out in my mind.

Mrs. Riley was 78 years old, and she was “unrepresented,” meaning that she had no family. As her health declined, the nursing home got a conservator for her. Luckily, she’d put her wishes in writing so it was clear what she wanted at the end of her life.

Mrs. Riley was assigned to one of our newer hospice nurses, Katie, who was in her 20s and had previously worked in the oncology unit of the hospital. Katie loved helping people and hoped to have more contact with patients in hospice.

I wasn’t surprised when Katie appeared at my office door, requesting that I visit Mrs. Riley with her. I knew something was up, so I agreed to go but asked her to update me first.

After filling me in on all of Mrs. Riley’s medical history, she hesitantly told me, “I heard her call out ‘Mommy.’ I think she thinks that I’m her mother, but when she repeated it, she was looking over and past me, as if I weren’t there.”

“Do you think she might be having a vision of her dead mother?”

“Do we know for sure that her mother is dead?” Katie inquired.

“No, we don’t, but if she was alive, don’t you think she’d come in the front door rather than appear over your head?”

Katie didn’t find my sarcasm amusing, but I went on.

“Seriously, Katie, why not just accept it for what it is? The patient believes her mother is there, and what could be more comforting than having your mom with you at the end of your life? Why not treat it as reality? You can’t argue with her and say that she isn’t there. There’s no point in that.”

“Thanks, Lainey. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I guess I can try to accept that her mom is coming to visit.”

The next day, however, the young nurse pulled me aside in the hallway, and in a worried voice, said, “Okay, I was getting used to Mrs. Riley’s mom being there, but now Dad has shown up, too.”

I tried to explain how common and comforting this is to the patient. “Don’t you think it would be arrogant to tell someone that what they’re seeing isn’t real?” I asked Katie.

“How can you know for sure? How do you prove that someone isn’t seeing a deceased loved one? While you’re at it, try proving whether or not the afterlife exists, too. As far as Mrs.

Riley goes, she has her parents with her; and she also has you, a caring, compassionate nurse.”

I meant every word of it. Katie
was
a good nurse who truly cared for all of her patients—she just knew more about pain and symptom management than she did about deathbed phenomena. The next day, like clockwork, Katie called and asked me to meet her in Mrs. Riley’s room. As I headed down the familiar hallway, all I could think was,
Doesn’t she ever
take a day off?

When I got to her room, Mrs. Riley didn’t look like she was in pain, but she seemed to be mumbling something.

“Listen to what she’s saying,” Katie said, so I pulled up a chair, sat down, and leaned in.

“There are so many of you,” Mrs. Riley softly remarked.

“So many of who?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Then she clearly said, “You are all so young—still so young.”

“Do you know why they’re here, Mrs. Riley?” I asked.

“They’re inviting me to join them.”

“How many are there?”

“So many,” she replied. “It’s so crowded. I can’t believe that so many are here.”

“Do you recognize anyone?”

“I can’t really see their faces—only some. It’s blurry. I do see Timothy, though. He was my first.”

“First what?”

“My first student to die.”

Katie grabbed my arm tightly as I continued asking Mrs.

Riley questions. “It’s so nice that your parents and your students wanted to see you. You must have been a wonderful teacher.”

“Nice,” was all she said.

When the young nurse and I left the room, she started treating me like I was some sort of spirit communicator. She peppered me with questions, such as, “How did you do that? How did you know she was a teacher, too? Did you guess, or did you know intuitively?”

I would have loved to take credit for being psychic and all powerful, but I decided to tell Katie the truth. “I read her history on file and found out she taught for more than 40 years. I thought that maybe teachers are comforted by their former students in their hallucinations. Or maybe certain students were coming to her because she played a significant role in their lives. Regardless, Mrs. Riley seems content and comfortable, and that’s all that matters. I know it’s unusual, but in time, you’ll get used to your patients’ visions.”

At the end of the day, the staff had a long discussion about Mrs. Riley. She’d been single her whole life and was totally devoted to teaching. We debated if her vision of all those children whom she couldn’t clearly see represented the students she’d taught during four decades. She had no family, yet she was never frightened by the experience. She died peacefully . . . and, unbeknownst to her, she taught Katie a lot about the end of life.

D
ON’T
T
ALK TO THE
C
ROWD

by Rita

I’m a social worker at a rural hospital. One patient I’ll never forget was a 75-year-old woman who had been diagnosed with colon cancer. Annie was a realist and very grounded—she said that she’d lived a productive life and was ready to hear the truth about her diagnosis and accept it. However, her family (particularly her daughter, April) kept insisting that there was nothing that she couldn’t overcome. They loved her and wanted her to stick around so much that they kept convincing themselves that their mother was getting better, but in truth, she wasn’t.

Before Annie’s health started to decline, she used to have a great deal of energy. Now she slept more and spoke less. In the space of a few weeks, in fact, she stopped talking altogether and spent most of her time dozing. Her loved ones felt helpless and sat in silence with her, making sure that she wasn’t in pain. But one afternoon, she woke up, sat up in bed, and began to speak quite clearly.

The family felt instantly hopeful. Maybe she was coming out of her illness, they told each other.

I hated to be the one to rain on their parade, but I told my patient’s loved ones that her sudden clarity of speech wasn’t a sign that she was on the mend; rather, it meant that she was experiencing one last rally before death.

As if my bad news wasn’t enough, although Annie was able to speak again, she wasn’t communicating with her family. Instead, she was talking to invisible people in the corner of her room.

“Mom, who are you talking to?” April asked.

“Why, people I’ve known my whole my life. They’ve been gone a long time, but they’re here to see me. So many of them—what a crowd!”

“Don’t talk to them. Stay with us.”

April was alarmed and came to find me at the nurse’s station. “I think there’s something wrong with my mother,” she said. “She keeps speaking to people she thinks she’s seeing.

I think she’s hallucinating because she told me that there’s a large number of her deceased family members visiting her in the room.”

Before I had a chance to respond, a nurse who was working behind the desk and had overheard us talking said, “Don’t worry. It’s a good sign that your mother can see a group of people waiting to welcome her. She obviously doesn’t feel alone or scared. This is a common occurrence right before someone dies.”

I told April that as a social worker, I see this all the time, too. I hoped this information would help her understand that her mom wasn’t going crazy or hallucinating.

This is how we as caregivers attempt to calm the waters.

In addition to comforting our patients, we often spend a lot of time reassuring and consoling family members when their loved ones are close to death.

After our talk, April seemed more relaxed and okay with her mother’s visions. I think it became sort of a tipping point for her so that she’d finally acknowledge that her mom wasn’t going to get better. In the end, Annie died at home, content and at peace. For this, her family was very grateful.

I have to say that deathbed visions—especially those of crowds surrounding the dying person—occur more often than most of us realize, and I genuinely believe they’re real. Most people’s initial reaction is disbelief or fear, but when we talk about it, it can be very comforting to know that our loved ones are taken care of as they leave this world for the next.

My journey of writing this book is coming to an end, but my
exploration will continue—and I hope that this will be the beginning
of yours.